So I’ve been away. For a long time. And then out of the blue I reappeared and dropped a bombshell.

I meant to share earlier, really, I did. Time after time I wanted to click the “publish” button. But the timing never seemed quite right. Even though I haven’t posted in over and year and I don’t comment frequently on other blogs, I still keep up with all of the blogs that I read during our time trying to get pregnant. Every single one of them. And sadly, there is still a lot of heartache going on in the blogosphere. It seemed that every time I was ready to publish that blog post, there would be more devastating news. To make a pregnancy announcement in the wake of a failed cycle, miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy would just be in poor taste.

And so I waited. Waited for the perfect timing. And, as with most things in life, there really was no perfect time. There was always one reason or another not to say something. And after a while the fact that I was hiding a pregnancy kind of became a source of embarrassment to me, like “I haven’t said anything in X months…how embarrassing it would be to come clean NOW.” And before I knew it, I was in my third trimester.

The other day I was reading through my old blog posts. Both from after Nina was born and those from when we were still trying to get pregnant. Reading those posts made me realize how much I cherish having that record of all we experienced on our path to parenthood and beyond. And it made me realize how much I want to continue that record so that I can look back on these times and remember all of the details that so quickly become fuzzy in my head.

So I pulled on my big girl panties and clicked the “Publish” button. And here we are. I’m 30+ weeks pregnant and due at the end of October with our son. Twenty six weeks have passed since that first positive test and neither my husband nor I can really believe that this is happening. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of how fortunate we are to be in this position.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our family lately. I know that the chances of us having another child without the help of an RE are virtually non-existent. It took us two and a half years, 5 IUIs, 3 IVF’s and a whole lot of heartache to finally achieve that elusive pregnancy. I’m not sure that we can go through that again, especially since it’s not just the two of us anymore…there is a third person to consider now. I remember turning to my husband shortly after Nina was born and saying “we have to find a way to make this happen again.” I loved being pregnant, I loved being a mom and couldn’t fathom not having that second child that we’d always pictured. One of the women in my support group is 95% sure that she does not want to have more children, that the one that she has is enough for her. I just could not put myself in her place or even begin to comprehend how that could be. I needed to have those two children…how could I possibly stop with just one?

But as time went on, I began to question the idea of two children. Many women fear that they won’t be able to love their second child as much as the first one. My fear was just the opposite…that a second child would take away even one tiny bit of time, attention, love, snuggles or kisses from Nina. Nina is my world and I want nothing to take away from how special and important she is. As I tossed these thoughts around in my head, I became more open minded towards the idea of Nina being an only child. The concept became acceptable to me, especially considering all of the crap that we wouldn’t have to go through if we didn’t have that second child. I remember sitting with a group of friends from my support group telling them that while I not-so-secretly hoped that I would be THAT woman who had to jump through hoops to get pregnant the first time, then magically got pregnant naturally on her own the second time, I would still be OK if it was just the three of us. I feel so incredibly lucky and blessed to have Nina…it seemed somewhat like tempting fate to try again.

My vision of our future changed and I began to see us as the family that we currently are, not the family that I always envisioned us to be. And it was great. The stress of wondering how we would manage to get pregnant again faded away and all that was left was enjoyment of our family, just as we are.

All of that changed on Valentine’s Day, 2011. On February 14th, I got up, peed on a stick, and sat there feeling foolish for setting myself up for the disappointment that I knew would be coming in just a few short moments. I’d been there so many times before. Not really believing that I was pregnant, but still holding out hope that some way, somehow the test would be positive. Only this time, the disappointment never came. What came instead were two pink lines.

Shock. I was in shock. I’m pregnant. And there was not a single pill, injection, ultrasound or violation of my cervix involved. The only “assistance” we required to make a baby was a weeklong cruise with lots of sun, booze and sex, apparently. Yes, I am now that woman that all of the obnoxious doctors (Dr. Ass Clown included) use as their anecdote as to why you need to go on birth control after having a baby, even if it took you forever to get pregnant the first time. Now I can be the anecdote for the “just relax, then you’ll get pregnant” assvice. Of course, to be fair, I went on my fair share of vacations while we were trying to get pregnant the first time, lot of good those did for my reproductive batting average. As much as I hate to prove Dr. Ass Clown right about his assvice, I absolutely couldn’t be happier that in this one case, he actually WAS right. As I told him nearly a year ago, if we were to get pregnant naturally, that would be the best possible outcome.

And so now, here we are, waiting out the early weeks and hoping for nothing but the best. I am so, so terrified to even acknowledge the pee stick with two pink lines on it, for fear that letting it become reality will somehow take it all away. I try to downplay the importance of it by reminding myself that this was so “easy” to achieve and we didn’t have to make any time, emotional or financial investments, so if it were to go awry it wouldn’t hurt as much as if we had made all of those investments. And in the same moment that thought leaves my mind, it is filled with the realization that this would likely never happen again. This is our once in a lifetime shot to have a baby without a whole mess of interventions, and the enormous weight of the situation falls on me again.

Could be so lucky that this might actually work? Every fiber of my being hopes that we are.

Two days after I gave birth, Dr. Ass Clown came to my room in the hospital to take a look at my incision and check on me. He reminded me that breastfeeding is not a surefire method of birth control and he asked if we’d thought about what kind of birth control we were going to use. I politely told him that we wouldn’t be using birth control and if we miraculously got pregnant, we’d be more than happy with that outcome. As he is want to do, he told me one of those anecdotal stories of a woman who, after much struggle with infertility, got pregnant via IVF and then magically turned up pregnant less than three months after giving birth to her first child. “Fabulous,” I replied. “I so want to be that woman.”

At my ten day checkup one of the other doctors asked us again about birth control. I replied that we’d be over the moon if we got pregnant naturally and didn’t have to spend over $30,000 and two and a half years to have a baby. He reminded me that it can, and does, happen. He questioned why we needed IVF in the first place, and without warning, the waterworks came on. I tearfully told him that I have crappy eggs and that of 53 eggs retrieved during our three IVF cycles, only seven of them even made it to day five and of those, only three were blasts. He reiterated that without birth control unplanned pregnancies can occur, and I once again stated that that would be the ideal scenario and I’d really look forward to that. He gave me a look, and dropped it at that. It was as though my comments were the absolutely strangest thing he’d ever heard.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I noticed that I was all of the sudden getting less output from my pumping sessions at work. I replaced the membranes on my pump, but was still getting significantly less milk than normal. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so a quick Google search suggested that maybe I was getting ready to ovulate, or get my period. Hmm. This got me thinking, as I had recently noticed the return of some obvious fertility signs. Some blood streaked EWCM along with the decrease in milk supply was a no brainer: I was going to ovulate. About a week later, I had some light pink CF and started getting cramps. Sigh. It was the writing on the wall…my period was coming. I remember complaining to my husband about my cramps and that it was a sure sign that I was going to get my period on vacation. In fact, I was so sure that I was going to get my period that I packed a box of tampons and a package of pads in my suitcase so that I wouldn’t have to buy them while on vacation.

All vacation long I waited for my period to come. And waited and waited. Those cramps that I’d been feeling disappeared and there was no more spotting to be seen. I felt great. Weird. I started thinking. Blood streaked EWCF is supposed to be a sign of high fertility and pink CF about a week later, along with cramps. Hmmm. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t be pregnant, could I? There’s no way I could be “that woman” and end up pregnant before I got my first post partum period, could I? I decided that if I still hadn’t gotten my period when I got home, I’d take a pregnancy test. Meanwhile, my mind was spinning. I was lost in a daydream about how absolutely fantastic and miraculous it would be if I were able to get pregnant on our own. How great it would be to have two children so close in age (challenging though, I’m sure). How much fun it would be to share my pregnancy news with my support group members and how painful it would be to have to break the news to my friend who continues to struggle with infertility.

My daydreams were bolstered by a rash of what I like to call “much easier than the first time” second pregnancies. Two of the women in my online support group have already given birth to their second kids and two more are currently pregnant. One woman from my real life support group got pregnant on her first IUI whereas her first baby took 11 IUI’s to conceive (her husband is sterile, so they use donor sperm/IUI). It just seems like the second time around is going a lot easier for many of the women that I know, so why shouldn’t it be that way for me too?

We returned home and despite my resolution to test, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The thought of it was too scary. Of course while a positive result would make me ecstatic, a negative result would signal the return of infertility, and all of the insanity that comes with it. I didn’t have any pregnancy tests on hand and wasn’t feeling brave enough to actually go out and buy any, so I compromised and took the only OPK that I had left over. It wasn’t even close to positive so I figured that I wasn’t pregnant and that I’d be getting my period any second. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. Still no period. By this time it was two and a half weeks after that blood streaked EWCF and I knew that if I was pregnant, it would definitely show up on a test.

I bought some tests.

I POAS.

As the dye ran across the test, a faint second line came up immediately. My heart started racing and I was in shock. It can’t be. There’s just no way. I held the stick in my shaking hands and continued to stare at it.

Slowly but surely, the second line faded away and all that remained was the control line. The test was negative.

Despite knowing that the test was negative, I couldn’t stop myself from returning to check on it every few minutes, just to make sure the line hadn’t somehow magically reappeared. I knew that chances of me being pregnant were virtually zero, but I had managed to let myself believe that it could actually have happened. As great as it would have been if the test had been positive, I was surprisingly OK with a negative. It was a bit of a reality check, I suppose. A reminder that I shouldn’t let myself get caught up in trying to get pregnant again. The fact is that we probably are never going to get pregnant on our own. In fact, I’d be surprised if we’re ever able to get pregnant with a biological child even using ART.

As it turns out, I never even ovulated. I’m guessing that my body was gearing up to ovulate and just never quite got all the way there. Anyway, it’s now three weeks after that fake-out ovulation and my body is trying to ovulate again, and this time I think it’s for real.

Despite knowing that we’ll likely never get pregnant the old fashioned way, I find myself falling into the same trying-to-conceive-insanity that was my life not so long ago. Sigh. How does one let the return of fertility, or in my case, infertility, not rule their every waking moment?

Having Nina has turned my whole world upside down in such an amazing, incredible way. I can’t imagine not having her in my life and not a day goes by that I’m not eternally grateful for her.

But having a baby has changed me in ways I never expected, and I’m not talking about all of the mushy goodness I alluded to in the above sentences. I’m talking about the new me.

The new me has bumps on my upper arms, my upper thighs and even my butt. I have no idea what these bumps are. I’ve never had silky smooth flawless skin before, but these new bumps bring my crappy skin to a whole new level. Sadly, these little buggers don’t go away with exfoliation so I guess they’re a part of who I am now.

Along with the bumps, the new me also has a few skin tags too. They developed during pregnancy and I had hoped that they might just go away, but no such luck. They’re tiny and I’m probably the only one who notices them, but I’ll probably ask to have them removed next time I see my doctor.

Dry skin, oh the dry skin. I’ve always had crazy dry skin, but during pregnancy it seemed to go away. I was able to take a shower and not immediately have to put lotion on my face after getting out…it was fantastic. Birth of the baby brings all that dry skin back with a vengeance.

The new me is also losing hair like a mad woman. I thought the hair loss while I was pregnant was bad, but this is ten time worse. Poor Nina always seems to have a stray hair or two of mine on her somewhere. I have no idea when, or even if this will ever stop, but I sure hope it does. I feel like I’ll be bald in another week…

My pregnancy induced SPD is mostly a memory, thank god. There are still moments when I will try to move something heavy with my foot and I’ll wince in pain from it, but for the most part I feel great. I was really worried that I would have lingering issues with this, but so far so good.

My mind is a mess. An absolute mess. I can’t remember anything anymore. I have problems remembering the names of people that I’ve known for years. I can’t even blame it on a lack of sleep as Nina has been sleeping from 8 or 9 at night until I wake her up at 6 am since she was 3 months old. I’m constantly fumbling around for my words too, and mixing up the order of my words in a sentence. It’s embarrassing and a little bit unsettling and I only hope that someday my memory and brain function will find its way back to me someday soon.

I’m chubby. Yup, I’m not doing such a hot job on losing the pregnancy weight. People tell me that I’m looking good and that I must have lost weight since I saw them last, but the reality is that I haven’t lost a pound since about five weeks post partum. Quite honestly, I haven’t made any bit of effort to lose weight, so I guess I’m not surprised that I haven’t lost anything lately. It would have been fantastic if the weight would have continued to fall off like it did the first few weeks, but I guess I’m going to have to make some sort of an effort. Healthy diet and exercise, here I come!

I’m certainly not complaining though…all of these changes were well worth the reward.

Sadly I’m back at work now. Away from my sweet baby for at least eight hours a day. Happily, my husband is at home with little Nina. To keep me going during the day (and because I’ve threatened him if he doesn’t), he sends me a daily picture of Nina from his iPhone. Here are the photos from this week.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Things are going great. Nina is such a doll and we can’t get enough of her. She will be four months old next week and I honestly have no idea where the time has gone. We are trying our best to savor every moment with her, and I think we’re doing a pretty good job of it.

The left hand will do occasionally, but the right hand is really where it’s at. She makes me laugh when I’m changing her clothes and she can’t get to her hand because it’s in the sleeve of her shirt, she’ll try to eat her sleeve since she can’t get to her hand. I’m easily amused, what can I say?

We are having so much fun with Nina. I can’t believe that tomorrow is my last day with her. I’m back to work on Thursday and have been trying to soak up as much time with her as possible, hence the lack of posts lately.

Today my husband had a gastroscopy, which is an endoscopic look at the insides of his esophagus, stomach and intestines. As you can imagine, something of this scale takes place in a hospital; the very same hospital where Nina was born, as luck would have it.

That hospital holds nothing but memories of Nina for me. We took our birth classes there, had our version attempted there and finally gave birth there. It was the first time that we’d been back there since February 18th and it brought back all kinds of memories for me. I remember the excited yet scared and nervous anticipation I felt that morning as we drove through the dark city to the hospital. The way the front desk woman looked at me with big eyes and asked if I was alright. Waiting in the registration area and telling the woman who checked us in that we were going to have a baby girl that day. The walk down the same hallway that we walked just two and a half short months ago.

It was very powerful to go back to the hospital, this time carrying our sweet baby with us. As I toted little Nina around the hospital with people cooing over her, I realized for the thousandth time that she is for real. We returned to the hospital for the first time no longer anticipating the arrival of our girl, but basking in the glory of her. We’ve finally got what we always wanted so much.

Nina is almost eight weeks old…here’s where we’ve learned about her so far.

Nina hates a wet diaper. She also dislikes a dirty diaper, but strangely enough, she seems more bothered by having a wet one than a poopy one. She’s also a champion pee-er. Two consecutive days in a row, she peed three times in 20 minutes. It’s times like that when I’m so glad we cloth diaper. Even though each diaper individually is pretty cheap, it would still piss me off to know how many of them were “wasted” within seconds on being put on and how much more waste we’d be generating.

Speaking of diapering, my baby girl is growing up!!! Her adorable newborn diaper covers are one heck of a tight squeeze these days. She no longer fits into newborn outfits, but that hasn’t stopped us from squeezing her into them for the past week or so since we’re not ready to retire her first set of clothes yet. She no longer makes that adorable little “O” face that all newborns seem to make. For the past few nights she’s only gotten up once per night to eat. She stays awake for a good couple of hours in between daytime feedings, looking around at her surroundings and taking everything in. She’s become more vocal while she’s awake, making little sounds if for no other reason that just to let us know she’s here. I can’t believe how quickly she’s changing right before our very eyes.

Nina is a champion breastfeeder…sort of. She’s really good at latching on, and has been from the start, so I give her huge credit there, but she’s not super efficient at eating. She’ll eat for ten minutes or so, then decide that it’s time for a little break and rest for a while. Then she’ll eat again for a few minutes and rest a little bit. She’s always been a poky little eater and her pediatrician suggested that rubbing along her jaw bone could help to encourage her to eat better and keep her focused on what she’s doing. The trick works like a charm, but I seem to lack the dedication to actually DO it because I’m too busy surfing for baby deals, reading blogs or playing games on the DS. Because of both of our laziness, feeding Nina can take anywhere from 30 minutes all the way up to an hour and a half.

This girl is a loud eater. Not loud as in slurping and sucking loud, but she makes a lot of sighs and grunts and just general vocal noise while she eats. It is quite entertaining . Also entertaining are the incredible burps she lets fly after she’s done eating. I’d heard that breastfed babies don’t ingest too much air while eating and therefore don’t often have to burp. I can wholeheartedly say that this is not true for my child. This girl can burp with the best of them (much to daddy’s delight).

Nina will not fall asleep on her own. She just plain won’t do it. Try putting her in her crib when she’s awake and you won’t be out of her room for more than five minutes before you hear her hollering. She simply must fall asleep with someone. This fact means that after she finishes eating, I have to wait a good 15 minutes to a half hour for her to get into a deep enough sleep that I can take her to her crib, swaddle her and shut the door without her waking back up. If I fail and she wakes up, then it’s time to use the five S’s in an attempt to get her back in a nice deep sleep again. All told, middle of the night feedings can stretch up to a two hour process, depending on how dedicated she is to eating, or how hungry she is.

The only exception to the above rule is falling asleep in the car. The car is the only place that Nina will fall asleep on her own and usually that’s with a lot of crying and repeatedly putting her Soothie in her mouth (she’s not very good at keeping it in for much longer than a minute or two on her own). If she’s just recently been fed, however, she can fall asleep without any intervention from us. We like those times.

Nina’s got some serious gas issues, which seem to occur on a completely random basis. She will be happily eating away and all of the sudden she will pull away, here face will get bright red and she’ll let out the most pitiful scream I’ve ever heard. We’ve found that a combination of gas drops, gripe water, tummy massage, jiggling and pushing her feet towards her head will usually get the gas moving out. We recently discovered that the bouncy chair with the vibration turned on seems to help as well. Of course it’s always anyone’s guess as to which combination of those things will be the one to work on any given day…

We have loved getting to know our daughter over these past eight weeks. Here are some of my favorite pictures of her so far.

We were scheduled for a 10 am c-section and needed to be at the hospital by 7:45 to get checked in and up to our room by 8 am. I was given strict instructions to not eat or drink ANYTHING after midnight the night before. We arrived at the hospital a few minutes early and my husband dropped me and the luggage off at the front door and I waited in the lobby on the couch while he went to park the car. The woman working the info desk saw me come in and no more than a minute later she came over to me and asked if I was OK. I wonder if I looked so awful that she was honestly concerned about me or if it’s just standard procedure to check in with pregnant women hanging out in the lobby.

Anyway, we checked in and were told to go up to our floor where we were shown to our room. Our nurse came in and told us what was going to happen between then and when we actually went down for the birth and gave me a gown to change into. Then she left us to get everything ready to take my vitals and do our intake paperwork. While she was gone, we tried to get as unpacked as possible so that everything was ready when we came back to the room.

Waiting...

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before she arrived back in our room with machines to take my vitals and a computer to do all of our intake paperwork. She went through a list of questions with me, nearly all of which I had already answered on the phone with a different nurse a few days before. The nurse was surprised that I had already answered all of the questions and commented how that would save a lot of time before the surgery. She came back in and brought some scrubs for my husband for surgery.

Ready to become a dad!

Then she shaved me, ahem, “down there” and got my IV going. After that point she told us that things with the first c-section of the morning were going well and I may be able to get in early, maybe around 9:30 instead of 10. I was excited, but nervous all at the same time. 9:30 came and went and eventually she returned to tell us that they had gotten behind and my surgery was actually going to be delayed now. Time was creeping by and I was getting antsy, so I played solitaire games on the Ninetendo DS which helped to take my mind off of things.

Eventually the nurse came back in to tell us that they were getting ready for us and we’d be going down shortly. Around 10:30 we left our room and went down a floor to the operating suite.

The walk down to the OR

We initially went into the recovery room where we got our hair covers and my husband got a pair of booties to wear.

Waiting to go into the OR

I was happy to see that one of the nurses, Dee, who was going to be taking care of me during surgery was the one who was with me during and after our attempted external version. She had told me at the version that she is a surgical nurse and she’d probably be there for my c-section, and it was definitely nice to see a familiar face. After a few minutes, I was taken into the OR to get my spinal, while my husband had to wait in the recovery room until I was prepped for surgery. The surgical suite seemed like organized chaos to me. There were many more people in the room than I ever expected. There was Dee, at least three other nurses, an anesthesiologist, someone else who was with the anesthesiologist (a supervisor perhaps?), and my OB who would perform the actually surgery.

They had me crawl up on the table and face the wall so they could do the spinal. Dee stood in front of me and rubbed my legs and hands while they prepped my back for the spinal. As I sat there amongst all of the chaos around me, I was completely overwhelmed by emotion. Before I knew it, I was in tears. Tears for the anxiety and fear of the impending surgery and recovery. Tears for my lost dream of a vaginal delivery and being an active participant in our daughter’s birth. Tears because for as nice and caring as nurse Dee was, I wanted nothing more than for my husband to be the one rubbing my hands and legs. Tears for the realization that within a few minutes we would finally meet the baby that we had been so eagerly anticipating for more than three years.

I could hear one of the nurses taking inventory of all of the supplies included in the c-section surgery kit and the rest of the people in the room were discussing Shaun White’s performance in the Olympics the night before. I started sniffling as the tears continued to fall and Dee asked if I wanted a tissue. As first I declined, then as my nose started running I reconsidered and took the tissue. I wiped my eyes and nose, all while trying not to move as the spinal was being administered. I didn’t really notice the pinch or sting of the numbing medicine and I tried to focus on the sound of the blood pressure machine as it clicked on and off, constantly monitoring me. Before I knew it, my feet began to feel warm and tingly and the sensation moved up my legs, which were all of the sudden like tree trunks and completely immoveable. They helped me to roll over onto my back and tested the effectiveness of the spinal. I could feel the pressure of them touching my stomach, but not the cold temperature of whatever it was they were using to test the spinal. Satisfied that the spinal was effective, they inserted the catheter and began prepping my belly for the surgery. While they were prepping me, small waves of nausea began to wash over me. Not “I’m going to puke” nausea, but just “I feel slightly sick and lightheaded and really weird.” I started breathing deeply in through my nose and out through my mouth in an effort to calm myself down, which I think must have worried the anesthesiologist because she kept asking if I was OK.

After what seemed like an eternity, they finally brought my husband in to the OR. I was so happy to see him and told him how upset I was that he wasn’t there with me. He told me that it was awful for him to be sitting out in the recovery room all by himself while I was being prepped. Happily reunited, we sat there together waiting for the surgery to begin. They taped the drape to my stomach, put some warm linens on my arms and then they began. There was a lot of chatter back and forth between the people in the room, most of which I paid no attention to. The anesthesiologist would tell us what they were doing and how things were going. Contrary to what I’d always heard about c-sections (you’ll feel lots of pressure, but not pain), I really felt nothing at all. The thing I remember most was that my body seemed to always be in motion, rocking back and forth slightly on the table as the doctor did her work. The entire situation was extremely overwhelming for me so I continued to breathe deeply trying to stay as relaxed and happy as possible. At one point I remember hearing my doctor said to someone “Wow, she’s got great abs” and then she yelled over to me to tell me the same thing. It struck me as such an odd comment and then it hit me that she was actually talking about my muscles. My insides. I have nice abs. What a strange comment to hear during your baby’s birth.

Eventually the doctor said that she was going to break my sac of fluids and the anesthesiologist told us that we would hear a gush, which intrigued me. I never did hear the gush, but then the doctor said that she would have our daughter out soon and I became completely focused on identifying the moment when she came out. Of course I was completely numb and there was no hope that I could actually know when she was pulled out of the home she’d spent 40 weeks inside. The only indication of when she was actually born was the sound of her cries as she came out.

I immediately started crying. As I struggled with infertility, the one thing that I focused on was getting that positive pregnancy test. That was my one and only goal. I knew that once I finally got pregnant, life wouldn’t be all rainbows and sunshine, but I never anticipated the stress of the first trimester with all of the bleeding and constant worry that something would go wrong. I was much more relaxed for the rest of the pregnancy, but back in a teeny, tiny corner of my mind there was always the worry that something could go wrong. I was always focused on the moment when I could hold her in my arms to know that she had arrived safely. Obviously that moment of holding our daughter for the first time would be delayed with a c-section, so instead I focused on those first cries. When she came out crying, it was the happiest moment of my life. She had a good strong cry, which was all I had hoped for and those little baby cries had both me and my husband in tears. This was a moment we’d waited a long three plus years for. We looked at each other and smiled, knowing that our daughter was finally here.

All of the sudden there was chatter everywhere: “Wow, she’s a big one!” “She looks great!” “Listen to those cries…we love it when they come out crying!” “She’s a big baby!” All of the comments on how big she was had me wondering what kind of giant baby I had carried inside of me. They did what they needed to do to get her ready to show to us and finally they said “look at the top of the curtain to meet your daughter.” I looked up and there was a tiny little head floating over the top of the curtain. In all honesty, I didn’t really process what she looked like at all. She was very swollen and still pretty gunky, plus they didn’t really have her held quite high enough to see her whole face. It didn’t matter to me though. She was our daughter. Our long awaited baby was finally here. That in itself was perfection. They told Mark to come around the curtain to be with her as she was weighed and measured. He turned to me and asked if I was OK and I told him I was fine and to go be with our daughter.

She's just brand new

I was left there alone as they stitched me up. In front of me, high on the curtain, was a small round blood stain where they must have accidentally touched Nina’s head while they were lifting her up to show her to us. I focused on that little red spot, knowing that it came from our baby girl. It was the closest thing that I had to her for that moment.

I could hear my husband on the other side of the room with Nina where he was fawning over her and giggling. It made me so happy to hear the joy in his voice, knowing that his adult dream of being a dad had finally come true. Eventually he returned to me with our little daughter all bundled up and introduced me to her.

One Small Wish granted...one happy family

She was perfect. Even with all of the swelling, you could tell she was just adorable. She looked to be in such peace, all swaddled up with her little hat on. I wanted nothing more than to hold her, but there really wasn’t any way to do so since the drape prevented my arms from going any lower than my armpits. Instead Mark brought her down to my face so I could give her a big kiss. We were finally the family we had dreamed of becoming. My One Small Wish has finally been granted.

Now that we’ve had Nina for five weeks, I finally feel like I’m starting to learn what works for us and what doesn’t. Here’s my list of “gotta haves” and “can do withouts.”

Love ‘em:
• My Brest Friend nursing pillow: This is like a Boppy, but different. It’s made out of molded foam (I think) and wraps all of the way around your back and closes nice and tight with a buckle. It’s got raised bumps where baby’s head should be while nursing so that her body is properly aligned. It’s also formed so that the edges of the pillow are very well defined 90 degree corners versus a soft edge where mama meets pillow. The well established edges prevents baby from falling into the “crack” between the soft, curved edge of a Boppy and mama. I put this on my list of loves, but with a caveat. I loved this pillow in the hospital. I loved this pillow for the first few days at home. I hated the pillow for a week or so after coming off of my pain meds. I love this pillow once again.

The reason I hated the pillow for a while is because even though there is a strap that keeps the pillow nice and tight around you, it also puts a decent amount of pressure on the area below where the pillow is sitting. In my case, that means the area of my belly that is the most sensitive. After coming off of my pain meds it was too painful to use the pillow because the pressure it put on the area between my belly button and my incision was just too much. Eventually I determined that if I put another pillow underneath the nursing pillow, it would hold the nursing pillow up, which effectively eliminated the pressure on my belly, which made the My Brest Friend regain its status as a must have item. I love that I can walk around the house with the pillow strapped around me and Nina nursing away if I need to. I can also do things with two hands while she eats since she is held in the perfect position. Plus the pillow has built in back support, which is so nice. I got my pillow on ebay for $15…quite possibly the best $15 I’ve spent on baby related things so far.

• Gilligan & O’Malley (Target) nursing tanks: Love, love, love em. I own 4 different colors of these and wear one every day. I bought a couple of nursing bras before Nina was born and haven’t worn either one of them yet because I love the tanks so much. The main reason I love these tanks is because my belly is completely covered while nursing. The thought of wearing a nursing bra doesn’t appeal to me whatsoever since it would mean exposing my flabby, still-stained-black belly. The tanks are somewhat tighter than I expected, which has turned out to be an unexpected benefit as it helps to smooth out the extra belly flab that I’ve got lingering around. I should mention that even nursing I’m only a B cup, so I can’t vouch for how well these would work for someone more well endowed than I am, but for my mini-boobs, they work great. I’ve noticed that they seem to run small though, so a size larger than normal is recommended.

• Kissaluvs size 0 and prefolds: Yes, that’s right, I love our cloth diaper stash. We didn’t start cloth diapering Nina immediately because we were waiting for her umbilical cord to fall off. After a week and a half, two trips to the store to buy more diapers, and $20 flushed down the toilet on said diapers (after going through about 75 disposables handed down from a friend) I decided that enough was enough and we would just be very cautious of her cord and start with the cloth. (Thank goodness I didn’t wait until her cord fell off as it didn’t come off until she was three weeks old.) A small part of me was hesitant to start the cloth since it was so easy to use disposables (especially the ones with the wetness indicator line), but I felt like if I didn’t get started soon, I may just chicken out and not do it at all. So one day I decided it was time and I haven’t really looked back since. I feel comfortable having her in cloth and don’t think twice about it, but my husband is a little less enthusiastic about it. He’s ok dealing with it at home, but if we go out for a long enough time that a diaper change would be required, he requests that we put her in a disposable and that we carry disposables with us in the diaper bag. He also won’t touch the diaper laundry, which is fine with me…I’m too paranoid he’ll put fabric softener in with the diapers or do something to otherwise harm the diapers. I have to say that I’ve been more than impressed with his willingness to use cloth as I didn’t think there was any way to get him to even consider it.

For right now we are using mostly prefolds and KL0’s, though we do have some other diapers in our stash. I’ve tried our Bum Genius Organic One Size All In One twice (once was fine, the other time it leaked, though to be fair I hadn’t prepped it fully, so I can’t blame the leak on the diaper) and our Grobaby twice (same results as with the BG, though I think this might be a fit issue too…the soaker seems to bunch up a whole lot since the diaper is folded down so small). I’ve got a Best Bottoms that I’m looking forward to trying as well as a Smartipants. Once Nina gets a little bit bigger, we’ll be doing the Jillian’s Drawers cloth diaper trial to see what will work best for us in the long run and we’ll work on selling off her newborn diapers and building a new stash of bigger diapers.

• Itzbeen Baby Timer: I honestly don’t know what I would have done without this little gadget during the first couple of weeks. Our hospital provided us with a book on newborn care and a small section included a log of feeding and wet and dirty diapers. Every time the nurses would come in to check on us, they would ask things like how often is she eating, how long does she eat, how long since her last wet diaper, etc. The timer really helped me to keep track of all of those things. It also helped me to make sure that I took my meds on time once we were out of the hospital because you can set alarms to remind you to do things after a certain duration of time. It’s not something I’ve used a whole lot lately, but I found it to be a big help during the first couple of weeks.

• Dunstan Baby Language: I’d never heard of this before the DVD arrived at our house as a gift from my aunt. The basis of it is that newborns (0-3 months old) have 5 basic “words” that they use to communicate what they want/need. The words are really just certain sounds that babies make when they need a specific thing. For example, when a baby is hungry, the cry will start with an “n” sound and the cry sounds like “neh.” I was kind of skeptical at first, but once Nina arrived, I could definitely pick out certain sounds in her cries and knowing these five “words” really helped me to know what she wanted. It’s not always easy to pick the “words” out of her cries, but more often than not, I am able to figure out what she needs and provide it for her. These first few weeks with a newborn are hard enough as it is…being able to know what Nina wants has been such an advantage and helps me to feel like I’m not completely clueless or incompetent.

• The Happiest Baby on the Block: Before I got pregnant, I’d heard a lot about this book being a lifesaver for new parents, so when I found it at a garage sale last summer for $3, I snatched it up. I started reading it a few months before Nina was due, but didn’t get very far into it. At my shower, a friend gave me a copy of the DVD as a present, but we never really got around to watching it before Nina was born. It wasn’t until about a week after Nina was born and I was extremely frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t get her to sleep anywhere but on me that we actually watched the DVD.

I really, really wished that we had watched it before Nina was born as I’m sure that it would have saved me a lot of lost sleep. I’m pretty sure that the book would have been explanation enough, but given the fact that I hadn’t bothered to read the whole thing before the baby was born, the DVD was a much appreciated shortcut to learning the 5 S’s.

While the swaddle worked just fine for us in the hospital, it caused nothing but screaming and crying at home. It wasn’t until we watched the DVD that we realized the swaddle alone wasn’t enough to calm little Nina and that it was completely normal for her to get even more upset being swaddled. We learned about the shh’ing and swaying and put that into practice and were amazed to see how well it actually worked. Watching the DVD saved my sanity and my only regret is that we didn’t watch it earlier. This is definitely a must have for any new parent.

And since this post has been sitting on my computer for nearly a week now waiting for me to finish writing it, I’m just going to post my “love ‘em’s” for right now. Stay tuned for my “leave ‘em’s” coming soon…

Thank you lovely ladies for all of the support regarding my previous few posts. It is always nice to know that you are not alone and that there are others who understand what you’re going through and can offer advice of their own.

A couple of days after my Blubbering Mess post, I had another small breakdown and my husband sat down and talked everything out with me. I told him that I’d never felt so alone in all of my life and I felt like he didn’t even love me anymore. I told him that I was frustrated with how things were going and that what I needed most was to be given words of encouragement and to be told how much he loved me. My guess is that it was a combo of him doing those things for me and my hormones leveling out as I immediately felt better and continue to feel really good. Bye, bye baby blues! We’ve been really enjoying life since that point.

I did end up sending my friend an e-mail about her infertility struggle. I told her that I was well aware that it was none of my business, but I wanted her to know that we also struggled to conceive and I was there for her if she ever wanted to talk. I didn’t hear anything from her for five days and was convinced that I had somehow offended, embarrassed or angered her. Last night we were together with some of our other friends and she seemed as cordial as usual, so then I wondered if she even got my e-mail in the first place. On our way out to our cars at the end of the evening she pulled me aside and told me that she got my e-mail. She said she just wanted to talk to me about it in person and that’s why she hadn’t responded. She said that she really doesn’t have anyone to talk about it with who can directly relate to what she’s going through. Her family is aware, but none of them ever dealt with infertility, so they can’t put themselves in her place. We’re going to get together to talk next week and hopefully I can provide some sort of an outlet for her.

Nina is gaining weight like a champ. She was born at 8lbs 7oz and rapidly lost weight to the point where she was 7lbs 5oz the night before we left the hospital. Because she’d lost 12% of her body weight at that point, it was recommended that we supplement her to help her get back on track with her weight gain. She would eat on one side and then I would use a syringe filled with formula with a narrow tube attached to it and thread that into her mouth as she ate on the second side. The formula did the trick and she maintained her weight by the time we checked out of the hospital. We continued supplementing her until her two day post discharge check up where she was up to 7lb 7oz and the doctor determined that we could stop supplementing her. We just went back two days ago on her one month birthday and she’s now up to 9lbs 6oz, so she’s caught back up nicely.

Breastfeeding is going well and as such we were able to introduce both a pacifier and bottle this week without confusion. It will be nice for other people to be able to feed her with a bottle so that I can be away from her for more than a couple of hours at a time if necessary. It will also be nice for Mark to be able to take part in feeding her and be able to bond with her that way. He got such a kick out of giving her the first bottle and can’t wait to do it again. On a related note, we’re not 100% sold on the bottles we have (The First Years Breastflow) and are looking to try other bottles. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Nina turned one month old two days ago. It is nearly impossible for me to believe that she’s been in the outside world for four weeks already. It seems like just yesterday that we brought her home. I know that everyone says that the time goes by so quickly and to be sure to enjoy every moment of it, but this first month has gone by faster than I could have ever imagined. I am sure that a large part of it has to do with the lack of sleep and the fact that each day seems to pass by in the blink of an eye. We’ve done our best to get out and about as much as possible and I think that has made the time go by quickly as well. Nina’s been to over 10 restaurants, been geocaching on two separate occasions and to the dog park a few times. We love integrating her into every aspect of our lives and can’t imagine life without her now.

Being a mom is more than I could have ever hoped for. I have so immensely enjoyed this first month getting to know our daughter. My husband has less than two weeks of work left at his current job and then we’ll have six weeks off together before I go back to work to enjoy Nina and make memories that we will fondly look back on and smile. We’ve got lots of baseball tickets for this spring and we’ll be taking a trip out to Seattle to introduce Nina to her aunt, uncle and nieces. We plan to take more local trips around our state with her as well and I’m sure there will be lots of other fun things to come in the next two months as well. As much fun as we have planned for the future, I have to slow down and remember to savor the here and now too. We’ve waited so long for this…I don’t want to miss a moment of it.

Beyond the fear of the highly unlikely (that Nina would just stop breathing in the middle of the night, or that someone would break into our house and steal her), my biggest nighttime worry is that she will wake up needing something and I won’t know it for hours while she is left all alone in her crib. It’s something that I’ve pondered every time that I’ve put her down in her bed and went to sleep in our room (which is a shockingly low number, by the way, but that’s another subject for another post). I don’t want to even THINK about my baby girl crying alone in her room waiting for god knows how long for someone to come and help her.

It just happened. I just woke up to the sound of my husband bringing little Nina into our bedroom. He said he got up to go to the bathroom and she was screaming bloody murder in her crib.

“But how does that happen? Don’t you have a monitor?” I can hear you asking the most obvious questions there are. The simple answer is yes, we do have a monitor. The unfortunate answer is that for the monitor to work, you have to recharge the batteries every once in a while.

I know that our monitor has a warning when the batteries are getting low…it’s one of the things I looked for when I picked out what monitor to get. However, it appears that a the sound of the humidifier and fan in our bedroom are loud enough to make the low battery warning completely inaudible to a tired and happily sleeping mama.

I immediately knew something was wrong when I heard my husband come in the bedroom…it was through the main bedroom doorway, not the bathroom doorway as is normal for a middle of the night awakening. In a panic, I asked what was going on. He replied that she was in her crib screaming “something fierce” and didn’t I turn the monitor on? Of course I did! My fear of this exact situation has left me double, triple and even quadruple checking that damn monitor to make sure that:

a. It’s turned on
b. The volume is up (on one occasion the volume was accidentally turned down all the way…thankfully this happened during the day and I was just in the other room and could still hear her without the monitor)
c. It’s on the right channel

Despite trying to do everything right and feeling like there was no way it could go wrong, it sure did. Note to self: if not using the monitor in a location where it NEEDS to be cordless, it’s best just to leave it plugged in.

And the part that makes me feel even worse is that we have a monitor with two receivers. The first is in the living room and is the one that we use the most often. Sadly and ironically, the second receiver lives in our bedroom…unplugged. Yes, the whole situation could have been avoided if I had not been so lazy and actually searched out a plug in our bedroom that continues to be powered even if the light switch isn’t on. It something we’re running really low on (two alarm clocks, a fan, a humidifier and my heating pad pretty much used up all of the available outlets) and I’ve been too lazy to properly investigate the situation and remedy it. So we’d just been carrying the living room receiver around with us wherever we needed it. Rest assured that project will be top of my priority list tomorrow.

So the good news is that she had only been in her crib for a little over two hours. It’s not unimaginable to think that she had been sleeping most of that time and had just recently woken up. My husband was also able to calm her down just by picking her up and holding her. I have to believe that had she been really, really upset, it would have taken a lot more to settle her down. And finally, she was not super hot in the face, which she always is if she has been worked up for a while. (Can you tell I’m trying everything I can to make myself feel better about the whole thing?)

I know it’s a rookie mistake and one that lots of new moms probably make. I also know that this will not guarantee years of therapy down the road because she has repressed feelings of abandonment (not to mention the fact that we’ll likely be the cause of way bigger things to need therapy for down the road). I know that she’s sleeping happily and contentedly in my arms right now and any thoughts of being alone in her crib are likely completely erased from her memory by now. I know that it’s not the end of the world.

But none of that stops me from feeling like the worst mama ever, for right now at least.

One of the girls who co-hosted my baby shower (let’s call her Liz) came over to our house to spend some time with Nina and us a couple of nights ago. We got to talking about how we are the first ones in our group of friends to have a baby and so we’re not really sure how the dynamic of the group and our involvement with our friends will change now that Nina’s in the picture. It’s not that we don’t want to hang out with our friends, it’s just that we don’t want to impose and bring her to events where she’s not welcome.

Liz pointed out that another couple in our extended group of friends is currently pregnant and while Mark and I aren’t very close with them (because they’re newer to our group and we just don’t know them well yet), at least it’s another couple that obviously is open to kids. Then she went on to mention another couple (we’ll call them Joe and Mary) in our group of friends and said something to the effect of “they’d have kids if they could.” I’d heard that this couple had some financial struggles a while back, so I asked for clarification on her statement, asking if she meant that finances were holding them back from having kids. She kind of stopped and looked guilty and said, “Oh, I thought that Mary had told you about it.” I could see the recognition in her face that she wasn’t really going to be able to get out of the situation without telling us what she meant, so she said “They’ve been working with a fertility doctor for the past two years. Mary seemed to give the impression that it’s an issue with Joe.”

At this point I could feel my face flushing. I haven’t told Liz, nor anyone else in this group of friends about our struggle to conceive. I realize that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t already know; our friends are pretty sharp people and it wouldn’t be unthinkable that one of them put two and two together and figured us out, but we haven’t told any of them.

I tried my best not to give anything away, but I’m sure that my increasingly red face probably said more than I did…it’s just a question of whether or not Liz noticed. And at this point, I’m not sure that I really care anymore if people know what we went through. My motivation for not telling people was mostly because I didn’t want to have to deal with people asking questions of us all of the time, asking for updates on treatment and cycles and what the terminology meant. Now that we are past that, I feel much less protective of the entire thing. But regardless of how I feel, it wasn’t the time to come out to Liz, certainly not without discussing it with Mark first. I tried to play it off nonchalantly by saying how awful it was that they were having difficulties and the subject was quickly changed to something else.

But it ate at me. Mary was one of the co-hosts of my baby shower, throwing it at her house. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult that must have been for her. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for her to have me around the past 6 months in my pregnant state. I count myself extremely lucky in the fact that we were the first ones of our main group of friends to be pregnant, which meant that I didn’t have to deal with any of my friends getting pregnant before me. I can only imagine how difficult that was for her. In fact, we actually told all of our friends about the pregnancy at their house. It was a sports themed movie night and Mark and I put together a little photo slideshow of baseball games that we’d been to with our friends and at the end we had a slide that said “Baby L coming soon to a centerfield near you…anticipated draft date – February 2010.” As soon as that last slide came up, Mary whipped around in her seat with her jaw dropped and just stared at me. I thought her reaction was a bit strange at the time. While I figured that she was just surprised at the news, a small part of me wondered if there was more going on there than just surprise. She didn’t look hurt or upset or anything, so I assumed that I was just reading into things maybe a bit too much.

Over the course of my pregnancy she was always interested in what was going on with me and talked frequently about her cousin who was due around the same time as me. The fact that she seemed perfectly OK with both my and her cousin’s pregnancy had me pretty well convinced that I had completely projected my infertile feelings into her reaction to our pregnancy news. Even though her potential infertility had crossed my mind, it still completely took me by surprise when Liz said they’d been seeing a fertility doctor for two years. My heart broke for them, and specifically her. I wanted nothing more than to drive over to their house and give her a big hug and tell her that I understand. I wanted to take back my fantastic baby shower to spare her the pain of the experience. I wanted to take back all of the pregnancy talk that I did when I was around them. I want for her to know that she’s not alone and I’m there for her if she wants to talk to someone who can relate. I want to be there for her if she needs it.

The shock of finding out that they are dealing with infertility makes me realize just how common infertility is. And it made me realize that just because I always felt like we were the only ones in our group of friends that had to deal with the absolute hell that is infertility, I couldn’t possibly have been further from the truth. And it made me realize that unless people let you in, you may never know the pain that lies beneath.

So yeah, blogging with a newborn is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. The first few days with her were a piece of cake and I mistakenly thought that all the days to follow would be similar. I guess it’s that adrenaline thing that they talk about…you’re on such a high for the first week or so after having a baby, but then you crash and crash hard. While I definitely crashed, I wouldn’t say my crash was too hard, but things definitely changed for me around a week or so.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was bragging about how I hadn’t really been affected by pregnancy hormones and wasn’t emotional at all? Yeah, well I guess this is payback for my lack of emotions during pregnancy. It was almost exactly one week after Nina was born that I started getting anxious and weepy. The anxiety seems overwhelming at times. I worry that the anticipation of having a baby was overshadowing some problem in our marriage that we just buried in our excitement about our daughter. After all we’ve been through, I am all of the sudden terrified that my husband isn’t happy with our family, or more specifically, me. Now that the excitement and anticipation of our baby’s arrival are over and sleep deprivation and a dramatically different schedule have set in, I feel like there is a certain hollowness to our relationship. I feel as though all my husband can feel is his love for Nina, and I’m completely lost in the shuffle. Because I’m nursing Nina, I often find myself all alone as she eats while my husband does things in the office or plays video games. It’s a bit isolating and lonely at times. I know in my heart that is not how he feels, but sometimes that’s just how it feels to me and that’s hard to handle.

I’m also absolutely in awe of my daughter. I tear up just looking at her and marveling how we could possibly be so lucky as to have her as a part of our lives. In turn, I’m absolutely terrified that something could happen to her. After all we went through to get to this point, my heart absolutely breaks when I think of anything happening to her. I don’t know how I could possibly carry on without her.

On more than one occasion my husband has found me in tears and questioned what was wrong. The first time I told him that I really didn’t know what was wrong, and it wasn’t really untrue at the time. I told him that I was just emotional and I didn’t know why I was crying. It was mostly true, I was just feeling emotional about everything and anything that was going on that day. The second time he found me in our bedroom quietly crying. I tried to explain to him that I am terrified that something, anything could break up this family that we’ve so desperately longed and wished for.

He quietly reassured me that he couldn’t be happier with our family. That all he’s ever wanted as an adult was to be a dad and now he has that. That he couldn’t be any more impressed with me as a mom. That he always knew I would be a great mom, but I’ve completely surpassed his expectations. That I shouldn’t worry and should instead enjoy this special time we have together as a family. That he loves me so much. (I did note that he no longer says he loves me “more than anything in the world.” How quickly I’ve been happily displaced by our beautiful daughter.)

And I know he is right. I know he is right.

It’s just the baby blues and it will pass soon. In the meantime, blubbering mess it is…

I apologize for keeping you all in suspense, so without further ado, I present our daughter, Nina Adele. She was eight pounds, 7 ounces and 20” long at birth.

Since it’s 2:45 and my thoughts aren’t very coherent right now, I’m going with a bullet point post of what’s going on with us right now.

Nina’s birth experience was simultaneously one of the worst and best experiences of my life. As much as I tried to focus on how excited and happy I was to meet her, my emotions got the best of me as they prepped me for the spinal. I’m sure that a lot of it was just fear of the surgery itself, but I found myself totally emotionally overwhelmed by the fact that my husband was not allowed into the surgery room until I was completely prepped for surgery. We went through so much together to get to Nina’s birthday, and it felt completely wrong that he was not able to be there for me when I was scared and nervous. I was in tears by the time he was finally allowed in the room and he said his wait to be with me was agonizing as well. Of course the fear, tears and nerves were all quickly forgotten when we heard those first cries from our baby girl.

Apparently she must have taken her “larger than expected” birth weight personally and has been dropping ounces like no one’s business. By her second evening, she was down over a pound to seven pounds, five ounces, which earned her a “baby milkshake” with every meal. She gets 15 cc’s of formula with every feeding and at her weigh in today she was up to seven pounds, seven ounces, so we’re moving in the right direction at least.

I learned to listen to the doctors and nurses when they tell you not to “get behind the pain.” Due to some circumstances that would take way too long to type out, I was late taking my meds by a couple of hours on the day we were discharged. Bad mistake. Bad, bad, bad mistake. Don’t let it happen to you.

I love Target’s Gilligan & O’Malley nursing tanks. LOVE THEM. I know so many women who recommend just staying in the hospital gown until you go home because they’re “so easy” to nurse in and I absolutely could not disagree more. I knew the second I tried nursing Nina in the hospital gown that I wanted out of it as soon as possible. I put one of these tanks on the second my IV was out and I have been living in them ever since. They are so comfortable and perfect for nursing and I literally cannot get enough of them (we’ve been back to Target twice in the two days since we’ve been discharged to buy more).

My recovery from surgery has not been anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be, which is such a pleasant surprise. The meds I was given in my PCA seemed to make me pretty nauseous, so I stopped using those pretty quickly and was happy to find that I still felt really good pain wise. I’ve been trying to be pretty active, though not too active and so far so good. I’m really, really happy with how much I’ve been able to do following surgery.

I love being a mom. Nothing is better. I walked into the living room today to find my husband lying on his back with Nina on his chest doing skin-to-skin contact and I immediately started tearing up. He didn’t understand that my tears were tears of joy and I couldn’t seem to put into words what was going through my mind. I just kept saying “she’s ours, we get to keep her” and “we’re so lucky” over and over again. This perfect little being is our daughter. I would wait for her over and over and over again.

There is so much more to say, but the little one is due for a feeding any second now, so I’ll leave you with a few pictures to hold you over until next time.

Our baby girl arrived at 11:10 am today and is simply perfect. She weighed 8 pounds and 7 ounces. We still have not decided on a name, but I’m fairly certain we will figure it out tomorrow! More details to follow soon…

Well, I’m less than 24 hours away from holding my little girl in my arms. I can’t honestly believe that the time is nearly here. While this pregnancy has seemed to absolutely creep by and I feel like I’ve been pregnant for years already, I still can’t come to terms with the fact that we will have a baby tomorrow. Wow. Words can’t really explain what I feel like right now, so instead I will leave you with some photos from my shower, my ginormous belly at 39 weeks and our little girl’s room. Next time I post, I will be a mommy!

The "baby" I made and had to make sure to take care of during the shower

My big ole belly with my "baby" and all of the pins I stole from other people who said the word "baby"

The adorable cake

Me with one of my friends. I picked this photo because it shows two things. 1. I have since lost all of the pins I stole from others since I couldn't stop saying "baby" and 2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar hung on the window behind us.

Looks like a hungry caterpillar has already been here...

Holy cow, I'm huge!!!

The quilt that inspired her room...and a good chunk of her wardrobe

Her crib, the butterflies my friend made for the shower, and the Very Hungry Caterpillar himself